The World Affairs Board is the premier forum for the discussion of the pressing geopolitical issues of our time. Topics include military and defense developments, international terrorism, insurgency & COIN doctrine, international security and policing, weapons proliferation, and military technological development.

Our membership includes many from military, defense, academic, and government backgrounds with expert knowledge on a wide range of topics. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so why not register a World Affairs Board account and join our community today?

I was referring to SK. NK may want reunification anyway as it would mean one Korea under Northern rule.

Footing the bill is one thing, throwing money of the window is another. Usually those who foot the bill, want some control on how their money is spent. You wont find that in the North.

The North just claims sovereignty and realizes that no military invasion is forthcoming, meaning no End User License Agreement. That would have to be enforced through military action in this case.

100 years to undo 60 years? In this fast moving world?

Asian societies are known for their resistance to change, even in an age of instant telecommunications and accelerated global trade. Perhaps this cultural inertia is a reaction to the high rates of historical change occurring today. For example, after 1868 Japan modernized greatly and acquired a lot of Western technology and sciences, but the government still held on to old geopolitical beliefs (e.g., Japan is a holy, inviolable nation) and the culture and customs of Japan remained pretty much as they were in the early 19th century. It was not until after the post-WW2 US occupation of Japan that the country began to look like it does today.

Today's East Asia has already been exposed to Western goods and ideas for several decades.

Look at Vietnam.

Vietnam did not have a ruling family at the time of economic liberalization. As well, whereas Korea was being ruled by a royal dynasty, the Lee family, when the Japanese annexed it in 1910, Vietnam was being ruled by the French colonial administration when the Communists defeated French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

I wonder if the Soviets installed Kim Il Sung as dictator of North Korea because the Koreans at the time would have been more willing to accept an autocratic ruler than a president + politburo.

At some point people will wake up hungry and very pissed off.

My guess is that it would degenerate into a civil war between popular rebels and Kim's militarists.

I heard that, prior to his execution, Jang Song-T'aek was keeping for himself the profits from seafood sales to China, while the Kims were not seeing much money. That battle between the Jang loyalists and the NK military was the last straw.

Like he can't oust them one by one? Or in larger groups.

KJU could have a few of the militarists' heads rolling, just to remind them to avoid getting uppity. However, doing this too often can and does backfire spectacularly.

Like to stop food and oil shipments? If he wants to get something, he must give something else in return.

So, this could mean that Beijing, not KJU, wanted JST out of the picture?

Perhaps JST's push to liberalize the NK economy had Beijing a bit concerned. Controlling NK would be difficult if it looked more and more like SK. From time to time Beijing still worries about war with Japan, war between Korea and Japan, and the possibility of a Korean irredentist wanting territory in Northeast China. (The Gwanggaeto Stele is located there.)

Putin is not that dumb to meddle in the complicated affairs on the far east. He has enough issues to solve on the western frontiers.

Right now Eastern Europe is hot.

And what happens when all is quiet on the western front? Vladivostok is pretty damn close to NK and China may want to get back Primorsky Krai in the future. This is more likely a matter of when rather than of if.

Hmm. Bullshit, you say? Looks like someone's been stringing me along all along. I'll need to go back and read the history books again.

You are much better informed than I am about the history of the world in recent times. Still, I don't see how today's East Asian leaders can separate the formulation of their policies from the current geopolitical environment created in large part by past events. For one, the love-hate relationship between Korea and Japan did not happen out of thin air.

There is a lot of talk about the reunification of Korea, but nothing suggests that it will happen in the short term. More likely to be a long-term objective.

I must admit that in today's Korea their national history is interpreted differently from before. We might even say... distorted, thanks in large part of public education and mass media. This happens in just about every other country in the world, to differing degrees. It's a natural characteristic of humans living in large groups. There is no "perfect" interpretation of history, I'm afraid. (And, as you and others have seen from time to time, I was operating under that delusion until recently.)

Which is why I've taken liberty to post what I posted in my last post. If you see anything in there that can be rebuked, by all means indulge.

You are much better informed than I am about the history of the world in recent times. Still, I don't see how today's East Asian leaders can separate the formulation of their policies from the current geopolitical environment created in large part by past events. For one, the love-hate relationship between Korea and Japan did not happen out of thin air.

How much history do you need for your father to tell you that your grandmother was raped by the Japanese? Stop looking at history when the hatre is personal. Your grandfather raped my grandmother and you're proud of your grandfather? See?

Originally Posted by Crocodylus

There is a lot of talk about the reunification of Korea, but nothing suggests that it will happen in the short term. More likely to be a long-term objective.

Nobody wants to inherit 27 million beggars.

Originally Posted by Crocodylus

I must admit that in today's Korea their national history is interpreted differently from before. We might even say... distorted, thanks in large part of public education and mass media. This happens in just about every other country in the world, to differing degrees. It's a natural characteristic of humans living in large groups. There is no "perfect" interpretation of history, I'm afraid. (And, as you and others have seen from time to time, I was operating under that delusion until recently.)

You've missed the freaking point. Gangnam style is more popular than Tae Kwon Do. Get it?

Stop looking at history. Here, we got a fuck who believes his own propaganda. He makes up his own history as he goes. We're not dealing with a cold calculating pyschopath. We're dealing with an idiot with delusions of godhood.

How much history do you need for your father to tell you that your grandmother was raped by the Japanese? Stop looking at history when the hatre is personal. Your grandfather raped my grandmother and you're proud of your grandfather? See?

I was not thinking of this during my last post. Sorry.

For millions in China and Korea, the legacy of the Japanese occupation of Korea has a personal meaning to it, one of them being the comfort women issue. This one produces mixed feelings, at least for me.

Even if there were some Korean women who willingly prostituted themselves to Japanese soldiers in the years leading up to WW2, it was not uncommon at the time for Korean women to be considered by the Japanese as social inferiors and therefore be frequently subject to mistreatment and rape at the hands of the same, especially if they insisted on holding fast to their Korean identity (which would've made Japanese agents suspect that such a person was working for the Korean insurgency). Since poverty was widespread in Japanese-occupied Korea, it's possible that more than a few Korean women turned to or were forced into prostitution just to make ends meet and thereby provide better living conditions for their families. A shameful thing to do in Korean culture, with its strong Confucian ethics, but what other options were there, besides either working for the Japanese directly or joining the insurgency?

For the most part Koreans were treated as second-class citizens in their own country when it was occupied by the Japanese 1910-1945. This is one bone of contention with Japan, especially since the generation of Koreans that were children or young adults during the Japanese occupation of Korea is still living for the most part.

I've heard often that for a Japanese person to say or even imply bad things about his/her own country, even respectfully, is considered a faux pas. To do so would mean losing face for the nation. Hence the Japanese reluctance to come clean and say that their soldiers in WW2 and before then did rather unpleasant things to people in the countries that they invaded and occupied.

There are also the Imjin Wars against the Japanese in 1592 and 1597, which ended with the Japanese getting expelled from Korea by a combined force of Joseon Koreans and Ming Chinese. The Meiji government apparently wanted to finish what Toyotomi Hideyoshi started and show the Europeans that they were not the only group of colonial powers, so the Japanese made a series of moves culminating in the annexation of Korea in 1910.

Nobody wants to inherit 27 million beggars.

If the discrimination often suffered in the South by NK refugees is anything to go by, this is 100% true. Koreans in the North are often seen by Southerners as backward and hopelessly rural. Which is why in recent years rural men in South Korea have often had to look to Vietnam and the Philippines to find brides; most SK women want to live in the cities, especially in Seoul. The Gangnam Style Effect again, it seems.

You've missed the freaking point. Gangnam style is more popular than Tae Kwon Do. Get it?

I won't challenge you on that one. Most South Koreans today live rather comfortably by Western standards, so, in contrast to the early Park Chung-hee years, there is no big hole of poverty from which one can only look up. As for Tae Kwon Do, it is widely practiced in South Korea and in other countries, but "Gangnam Style" is something else.

Stop looking at history. Here, we got a fuck who believes his own propaganda. He makes up his own history as he goes. We're not dealing with a cold calculating pyschopath. We're dealing with an idiot with delusions of godhood.

Now you've turned my world upside down! After the execution of JST, I thought KJU was taking matters into his own hands. Turns out he suffers from the classic case of boss-alone-at-the-top. I did know at one time, though, that it was never the Kims themselves who controlled NK, but rather their inner circle of government officials. In KJU's case, it's like when Americans say that Obama, lacking experience in comparison to previous Presidents, isn't doing the actual governing, but rather his inner circle of officials.

It appears that a reunified Korea is way off in the future and maybe with good reason. I don't think the world is yet ready for a drastically different East Asia following the reunification and reintegration of the two Koreas. This might be one reason why, despite the lunacy, KJU is being protected by Beijing.

Ok North Korea and South Korea reunite, here lies just one problem off the top of the bean....

South Korea would never agree to be under the Kims rule and be treated like the North's people and the Kims will NEVER step down and agree to open elections and an end to their legacy.

It would take an all out war. Which ofcoarse is going to draw in the US & China as it did decades ago.

Would it be possible for NK and SK to duke it out on their own? This would be the ideal situation, I think, but Korea would be "too big to fail", so US and China would have to get involved, even if only as suppliers.

The only way to avert that would be to have KJU or the next Kim covertly assassinated and a kagemusha put in his place. Or a less violent approach may be more desirable. The objective would be to hijack the NK government and manipulate its policy-making organs. Although, this and more may have been anticipated and so countermeasures have probably been put in place to prevent this.

A better scenario would be if SK could trade openly with NK and allow the South's cultural influence to penetrate NK society. It would, over time, help raise the living standards of the Northerners and make it easier for NK to integrate with SK. However, the result of this social and cultural change would make the Kims' house of cards collapse. If the change were to happen at a glacial pace, the Kims could either adapt themselves to stay in the game or obfuscate the change so that, at least fundamentally, things are as they've always been.

Also, I still think Beijing has a vested interest in keeping KJU in power, even if he's been acting a bit uppity lately and causing the Chinese to feel embarrassed in the process. It's possible that, even if USKOR decided to pull out of Korea entirely, the Chinese - and Japanese - would feel uneasy about a reunified Korea, whether DPRK or ROK is running it.

Or someone in the north comes up with a way to... dispose... of Kim & Co...

JST was probably thinking of taking KJU's place; he was, for many years, Kim Jong Il's right hand man. Even if KJU did not actually think that JST wanted him out of office, JST's "mismanagement of funds" did not sit well with KJU or the militarists.

Getting KJU out of office will be very tricky. Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Seong knew that such a thing could happen. So, according to my guess, they put in place organizational mechanisms to, at least, make it almost impossible to get the Kims out of power, short of a bloody military conflict.

Probably the only way to bring about the above is putting into action a long-term plan of infinitesimally incremental actions. It's a bit like the frog in the boiling water. KJU and/or his heir will not see the end coming - because it will be very slow in coming. However, when it comes, it comes and he'll have to face the music, whether he likes it or not.

This, I think. If half of what we hear is true, concerning the living conditions in NK, SK would have to sink massive amounts of cash and reources, just to fed and maintain the population. Not to mention supplying electricity, etc. Kind of a Marshall plan...

I agree that it will be an expensive endeavor but not an impossible one.
As far as history goes, the memories will lie with the older people now. It's the young generation which may need rehabilitating more than ever as they will be the source of future problems. Given that people try to escape from N'Korea, this could be an indication of the sentiment within the country, so how many young people do we need to rehabilitate, some but not all surely.

Anyway, this is just hypothetical. I wonder what would happen if N'Korea leadership was wiped off the map. What would happen internally?

There is no other choice. A North Korean collapse means not only refugees but their nuclear materials. Someone has to got to get control of their nukes fast ... and that someone are the Chinese. Everyone acknowledges this. Why else do you think the 38th and the 39th GAs are on the North Korean border?